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american culture

The culture of sports animates societies ideologies of inequality between race, class and gender. Sports have held racial barriers in place and have kept beliefs of inequality alive. Sports are more than expressions of athletic ability; they are expressions of masculinity and manhood. It is significant to take a critical viewpoint with sports in order to understand what our fascination with it implies about our society.
Male athletes are under pressure to succeed so that they can maintain the masculine image society has constructed for them. Sports have traditionally been limited to males and they idolize the brutalization of males. In Connell’s Masculinities, he delves into the meaning of what it is to be masculine. He describes masculinity in terms of behavior, in contrast to femininity, in essence being defined as “not-femininity.” An un-masculine person would be “peaceable rather than violent, conciliatory rather than dominating, hardly able to kick a football and unint...

Posted by: Adriana Alvarez

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